UK’s secret, ongoing mass surveillance rigorously frisked by watchdog
arstechnica.co.uk
arstechnica.co.uk
Remind me how we are a free country again /s.
UK is so screwed now, in more ways than one.
As also pointed out, just because the UK has had a referendum on leaving the EU and they voted in favour of leaving doesn't mean they've left the EU. In order to do so they need to trigger Article 50. So far none of the UK politicians have done so as they're too busy quitting, backstabbing and running around with their tails between their legs. No one wants to go down in history for this. Even if they had triggered article 50 it is estimated to take anywhere between a year and two for a nation to actually leave the EU (this has never been done before so no one really knows). During that time they are a "silent" member of the EU, bound by all its rules and legislation but with no vote or voice in the decision making progress.
It should also be noted that Cameron did not campaign to leave. He promised the referendum as a way to avoid his party splitting in two and in order to get (re)elected as PM. As a consequence he's now split his country in more than two. One could argue that this is worse.
It's also important to note that, IIRC, the Right to Privacy in the Charter of Fundamental Rights stems from Article 8 of the ECHR, thus still part of UK law via the Human Rights Act and has the same scope as specified in the ECHR. Though typically interpreted broadly, it is not a blanket right:
> There shall be no interference by a public authority with [the right to privacy] except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Imagining a world where governments are able to tell people not to speak publicly, or worse, secretly told not to do so, sounds like a horrible idea.
Perhaps we can defeat, or at least limit the impact of, the technology as individuals Stallman-style.
Of course, laws are a very high latency side-channel of authority and power, so they don't really fix anything either. You can't be un-surveilled by a court order, well maybe to a limited extent, if we trust the courts and law enforcement, which we probably shouldn't when it comes to surveillance. My point being, laws can't undo past actions or relieve a person of the memory of the experiences.
So what should we do? I'm going to posit that we, society collectively, won't do anything, not for a good while longer anyway if at all. Sure, we can use end-to-end encryption, but that does nothing to prevent meta-data being slurped up.
Yes. Tor, and like technologies. There are some mathematical limitations on total surveillance, there is a point at which the technological costs of tracking everyone 24/7 are beyond budgets or even physical possibilities.
Does this design confer some advantage in the event of a weapons strike, or is it purely architectural?
During the cold war, we used to joke that the flagpole in the center at the Pentagon was the most precisely surveyed pole in the World (by the Soviets).